It’s that time of year again when we look back at what has motivated the market for IT security solutions in the last year, in order to develop our plans for the next year. With so many public exploits, and data breaches, there’s certainly no shortage of material to leverage! I have grouped my predictions in to three categories: Methods for major hacks, breaches and exploits; The business of cybersecurity – focus and investments; and Offensive and defensive strategies.

Category: Methods for major hacks, breaches and exploits

Prediction #1 – The bigger they are, the harder they fall

If we think the headlines, with news of major organizations getting breached, shocked us, we will learn that large organizations have poor cyber security hygiene, are not meeting regulations, and are failing to enforce the policies they developed, recommend, and enforce on others. Next year’s news will have even more high-profile names.

Prediction #2 – Increase in mobile phone spam

With there being more mobile phones in most countries than there are citizens in those countries, mobile phone spam will rise 10,000% due to automated spam and dialing ‘botnets’ that essentially render most phones unusable because they receive so many phone calls from unidentified numbers. This rise in phone spam pushes cellular carriers to start to require that end users adopt an “opt in” policy so only those in their contacts can call them.

Prediction #3 – Major increase in ‘gaming deleteware’ infections

‘Gaming deleteware’ infections across most major platforms will increase as botnets continuously attack gaming networks and devices such as Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo systems with the sole intention of rendering the machine inoperable. The malware is downloaded as an embedded game add-on, causing millions of devices to need to be replaced.

Prediction #4 – The first major Apple iOS virus hits within a popular “free” game

As users click on the ‘ad’ to play a game for free, their iOS11 device will be compromised, leaking all data stored in the local Safari password storage vault.

Prediction #5 – Continued growth in the use of ransomware and cyber-extortion tools

2017 has proven the model that vulnerabilities nearly 20 years old are being exploited in organizational networks (Verizon DBIR 2017), so the opportunity is too great and too easy for organized crime to ignore. Further, the commoditization of these tools on the deep web opens the door to anyone who feels the risk is worth the reward. This is likely to continue until organizations get the basics right and the risk/reward balance tips, making ransomware far less appealing.

Prediction #6 – More end-user targeting

Penetration through unpatched servers like in the case of Equifax will happen, but hackers will continue to target end users with more sophisticated phishing and targeted malware, taking advantage of unpatched desktops where clients have far too many privileges. Again, don’t take your eyes off the end users.

Prediction #7 – Biometric hacking will be front and center

Attacks and research against biometric technology in Microsoft Hello, Surface Laptops, Samsung Galaxy Note, and Apple iPhone X will be the highest prize targets for researchers and hackers. The results will prove that these new technologies are just as susceptible to compromise as touch ID sensors, passcodes, and passwords.

Prediction #8 – Cyber recycling

As we see a rise in the adoption of the latest and greatest devices, we will see devices, and now IoT, be cyber recycled. These devices, including mobile phones, won’t be destroyed however. They will be wiped, refurbished, and resold even though they are end of life (EOL). Look for geographic attacks against these devices to rise since they are out of maintenance.

Category: The business of cybersecurity – focus and investments

Prediction #9 – More money for security, but the basics still won’t be covered

Organizations will continue to increase spending on security and new solutions, but will struggle to keep up with basic security hygiene such as patching. Hackers will continue to penetrate environments leveraging known vulnerabilities where patches have existed for quite some time. Regardless of whether it is an employee mistake, lack of resources, or operational priorities, we are sure to see this theme highlighted in the next Verizon Breach report.

Prediction #10 – IAM and privilege management going hand-in-hand

Identity Access Management (IAM) and privilege management adoption as a required security layer will continue. We will see more security vendors adding identity context to their product lines. Identity context in NAC and micro-segmentation technologies will increase as organizations invest in technologies to minimize breach impact.

Prediction #11 – Greater cloud security investments

Vendors will begin to invest more heavily to protect cloud specific deployments for customers migrating to the cloud. Supporting Docker/containers, DevOps use cases, and enforcing secure cloud configurations are some initiatives that will be driven by customers.

Prediction #12 – Acceptance that “completely safe” is unobtainable

As 2018 progresses and more and more organizations accept that breaches are inevitable there will be a shift toward containing the breach rather than trying to prevent it. This doesn’t mean abandoning the wall, but rather accepting that it isn’t perfect, can never be and shifting appropriate focus toward limiting the impact of the breach. Organizations will refocus on the basics of cybersecurity best practice to enable them to build effective solutions that impede hackers without impacting legitimate users.

Prediction #13 – Chaos erupts as the GDPR grace period ends

As organizations enter 2018 and realize the size of the task to become GDPR compliant by 25th May, there will be a lot of panic. This legislation seems poorly understood which has led to many organizations tabling it for ‘later’ and, for many, they will wait until the first prosecution is underway before they react. The EU gave over 2 years, after GDPR passed into law (27th April 2016), for organizations to become GDPR compliant, so there is likely to be little tolerance for non-compliant organizations which are breached after 25th May and, more than likely, some example setting. Those who completed their GDPR compliance ahead of the deadline will be right to feel smug as they watch their competitors flail.

Category: Offensive and defensive strategies

Prediction #14 – Increased automation in cybersecurity response

The size of the cybersecurity threat continues to grow through 2018, with increasing numbers of attack vectors combined with increased incidence of attacks via each vector (driven by commoditization of attack tools) leading to massive increases in the volume of data being processed by cybersecurity teams. This demands improvement in the automation of responses in cybersecurity tools to do much of the heavy lifting, thereby freeing the cyber teams to focus both on the high-risk threats identified and in planning effectively for improvements in defences. Increased use of machine learning technologies and, from that, more positive outcomes will lead to a significant growth in this area.

Prediction #15 – Richer cybersecurity vision

As organizations’ needs for more comprehensive cybersecurity solutions grows, so will the need for effective integration between the vendors of those technologies. This will lead to more technology partnerships in the near-term and eventually to industry-standards for integration in the longer term. The ability for systems to work with relatively unstructured data will allow for more effective information interchange and, as a result, far richer and more rewarding views across our cyber landscapes.

Prediction #16 – It is now law

Governments will begin passing legislation around cybersecurity and the basic management of IoT devices required for safe and secure computing.

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